D&D (2024) How did I miss this about the Half races/ancestries

[Guest 85555]

And you are free to disagree. But slavery has been done to death, especially in DnD. The mixed race person being outcast from society has been done to death. Seriously, it is rare for me to see a piece of media that presents someone as mixed race but accepted by both communities. Doesn't that story exist and deserve to be explored? Why can't that be the default, it is what we would prefer the world to be, right? So why is presenting THAT story a problem? Why can THAT art not be shown?

Because the former is natural more interested because it is loaded with conflict. The same reason it is often better to have bad guys going around exploiting the locals and murdering people: it is more gameable and gives the players something to chew on.

If you think it has been done to death, that is fair, but my point is it has been done so much because it works. In D&D it seems to have landed especially well and remained for so long because of that (speaking of half elves). Slavery has been done to death but so have dungeons and so have encounters and so have knights and dragons. We keep using these things because they help us tell interesting stories, they help with stakes and they help us paint a picture of certain kinds of societies in these games.

 

[Guest 85555]

The game is not less effective when you take that away. I should know, because I have never made a single DnD campaign that focused on going into the wilderness and killing the native population solely to steal their treasure. Game works just fine.

It absolutely impacts play to remove going to dungeons and wilderness, killing monsters and taking their stuff. Other things can be done, but this is like 80% of how people play the game. Again, I think framing it as "killing the native population" is just a way to connect it to colonialism, as killing monsters and taking their stuff can cover a broad range of situations.

Because, you know, it is a very different thing to go into the wilderness and find a city of monsters, with stone walls, metal tools and thriving communities. Suddenly, players don't want to just kill them and steal from them, because they recognize that would be wrong. But if you have them encounter a tribe of 30 people, in leather tents, with stone tools, suddenly it seems okay to murder them and take anything that isn't nailed down.

Sure, civilized monsters can be very interesting and other types of adventures can be very interesting. I am all for them. But people do want combat with monsters, they do want exploration. Putting those two things together is pretty much the magic of what makes D&D work (at least it is a big part of it). Many campaigns have other things in them, and some players are more than happy to go to an interesting city of monsters and contend with their challenges in another way. But there is something fun about kicking down the door and killing orcs in a dungeon.

But, here are just a few campaigns I've been in, that didn't follow these tropes.

• Players are hired by a kingdom to go out into the no-man's land between two warring kingdoms and discover the cause of a curse of undeath plaguing the area.
• Players travel to a rediscovered border city, deep in the wilderness, where they are attacked by Fey forces. It turns out that the Fey had a deal with the owners of the city hundreds of years before, and are trying to turn the deal to their favor by driving people away before the solstice.
• A hundred years ago the Evil Overlord won and took over the world. He now fights the Gods to make himself the true ruler of all existence. You live in his empire. Good luck.
• The modern world shifted, you are the post-apocalyptic survivors in a magical wasteland that used to be New York
• You are adventurers, seeking gold and glory, so far our biggest combat have been against undead in a shrine to a battle. We also did odd jobs around town to kill beasts.
• You have left your home to find your fortune and build a community. Traveling through the wilderness in a growing caravan of merchants, traders, and followers who are seeking an unclaimed land. Have yet to fight anyone for the purpose of stealing their stuff.
• You travel down into a deep dungeon, attempting to unlock the mysteries of it, especially as it contains multiple cities within its depths (never fought and killed anyone to take their stuff)
• You are freedom fighters opposing the psychic tyranny of the Chosen of Sarlona.

Yes, that is all great stuff. I don't have any problem with going beyond the dungeon or wilderness. What I am saying by cutting that out in the name of fighting colonialism (something it has no real connection to at this point), you are gutting the core activity of the game. The importance of the core activity is people know they can go to that when they need to sustain a long campaign. It's a very easy and basic thing to plan for and execute, and it is time tested.

All of these games were great. Not a single one involved killing native people and taking their stuff. Just, didn't happen. So, once more, your claim is false. The game is not less effective when this trope is not explored. In fact, a game that was solely treasure seeking is often the most boring game I can find, because I don't value money enough to kill people solely to get rich. Most PCs START fabulously wealthy, so the idea that I have some massive need to go out and make money by murdering people and taking their valuables is nonsense to me.

Again, just because there are other things that can be done in a game, it doesn't mean taking out the core activity isn't going to diminish the game. And once again, reducing what is being described to 'killing native people' so it ties to a narrative about D&D dungeon delving and wilderness exploration being a colonialist trope, I think frames the core activity unfairly.

 

[Guest 85555]

Okay, I didn't remember those lines. Do they make the movie better? Should more people have referred to Chewie as a non-person to really make the Star Wars movie cinema masterpieces?

I agree with Aldarc. They are pretty important lines for the reasons given (also it adds an important sense of humor and gives us a sense of Leia's gruff and pushy toughness). It probably doesn't need more or it would just become a roast of Chewie. But taking it out would certainly make the movie less than what it is. I mean it could survive. You aren't taking out the essence but you are ruining a part of it.

 

[Justice and Rule]

I agree with Aldarc. They are pretty important lines for the reasons given (also it adds an important sense of humor and gives us a sense of Leia's gruff and pushy toughness). It probably doesn't need more or it would just become a roast of Chewie. But taking it out would certainly make the movie less than what it is. I mean it could survive. You aren't taking out the essence but you are ruining a part of it.

You could literally replace it with "I'd just as soon kiss the Tauntaun" and it'd be exactly the same.

 

[Guest 85555]

You could literally replace it with "I'd just as soon kiss the Tauntaun" and it'd be exactly the same.

No it would not because the audience understands the connection to Chewbacca the Wookie character. It also sounds completely different losing the consonance between soon and wookie (and that sound is so think one of the things that conveys her toughness). I think this is why these ‘just change it to X, it’s exactly the same’ arguments don’t work a lot. Writers, designers and artists make choices like this for a reason (at least they are supposed to be doing so). These changes for larger principles will often overlook why the thing is the way it is in the first place.

 

[Justice and Rule]

No it would because the audience understands the connection to Chewbacca the Wookie character. It also sounds completely different losing the consonance between soon and wookie (and that sound is so think one of the things that conveys her toughness). I think this is why these ‘just change it to X, it’s exactly the same’ don’t work a lot. Writers, designers and artists make choices like this for a reason (at least they are supposed to be doing so). These changes for larger principles will often overlook why the thing is the way it is in the first place.

I'm sorry, you are just essentializing this way too much. There's nothing intrinsic about it having to be about Chewie in this situation, it just needs to be a joke to show her supposed disinterest. Putting it as the Tauntaun, a beast of burden that was shown in the scenes before this (With the line "I thought they smelled bad on the outside!") works just fine.

 

[Guest 85555]

I'm sorry, you are just essentializing this way too much. There's nothing intrinsic about it having to be about Chewie in this situation, it just needs to be a joke to show her supposed disinterest. Putting it as the Tauntaun, a beast of burden that was shown right at the start before these jokes, works just fine.

We are just going to have to agree to disagree here. I think I gave three very good reasons why it loses its punch. But if you think Tauntaun works, fair enough

 

[Justice and Rule]

We are just going to have to agree to disagree here. I think I gave three very good reasons why it loses its punch. But if you think Tauntaun works, fair enough

I think your reasons as to why it works better are largely ancillary and really don't matter as to why the lines work. I don't really care about the joke, but I find it really foolish to act as though the specific joke is somehow essential to any part of the movie.

 

[Chaosmancer]

These are pretty quotable lines. I also forgot Leia's iconic line, "I'd just as soon kiss a wookie" in response to Han Solo's line "Afraid that I was gonna leave without giving you a goodbye kiss?"

These quotes give us a pretty good sense that humans, on the whole, look down on wookies or consider them equals, essentially as sub-humans. That general condescension stands in contrast with the close relationship that Han has with Chewbacca, so that gives us a deeper sense of his character as well.

Does it make the movie better? Who can say? Does it tell us about the world and its characters with greater depth through "less is more" pieces of dialogue? I would say that it does.

Except that, to be completely honest, I've never remembered those lines until you just said them. They didn't stick with me like "Use the Force, Luke" or "I am your Father"

Maybe you are right, but also, I've never really seen anyone until this moment talking about how Chewbacca was defined by these moments of humans looking down on him and treating him like crap, except for Han Solo. But again, I'll ask, would making it more obvious, more racist, make them better movies? Because the argument I keep seeing and that I was talking about is "but if you don't stop telling people not to write racist things, then all art everywhere will become bland and boring!" So is Racism the secret sauce of making good art? Especially when, again, this is stuff that never seemed to be very important to the movies themselves?

 

[Guest 85555]

I think your reasons as to why it works better are largely ancillary and really don't matter as to why the lines work. I don't really care about the joke, but I find it really foolish to act as though the specific joke is somehow essential to any part of the movie.

It isn’t ancillary. It adds to the humor (especially with han’s rebuttal that follow). But the sound of the dialogue is very important. Like I said, writers choose words for a reason. Sometimes there are better choices, but here I don’t think something like Tauntaun is equal or better

I said prior this line wasn’t essential to the movie. Just that the movie is diminished when you take out those kinds of line. In my post I said the movie would still work you would basically just ruin a part of it